“Come join comics’ greatest creators and Be Counted as a member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at the Smithfield in the heart of NYC! This party is free for all CBLDF members, and if you join or renew at the event you’ll get in for free and receive special gifts from Dynamite & CBLDF! Donors joining or renewing their CBLDF Membership at the $50 level or higher will receive a free open bar wristband, while supplies last!”

Come out for a good cause and hobnob with the really, really, ridiculously good looking people in the comic industry!

Vanity: Jeff Ayers on Jeff Ayers’ job. 26 minutes of me pontificating upon the vagaries of NYC comic retail on the hottest day in recorded NYC history. In reality I know the difference between Detective Comics #27 and #37 and tensile and tactile. Saw a doctor and got rid of it.

Marvel’s giving us a chance to peruse the first six pages of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s (both of Civil War fame) next project (due to release 3/3/10) here. This being a Millar book from the publisher’s Icon imprint, you’d be correct in assuming the guy in the chair’s fate ain’t pretty.

CIVIL WAR? Nothing. KICK-ASS? A warmup. What if the smartest, toughest costumed bad ass in the world was totally evil? Meet Nemesis. He’s systematically been destroying the lives of every police chief in Asia, and he’s now set his sights on Washington, DC. Between you and me, the police don’t have a chance. Do not miss the book that EVERYONE will be talking about by the creative team that made CIVIL WAR the biggest book of the decade.

THE BEAT, now in its sixth year, is dedicated to providing the timeliest and most pertinent news and information about comics, the people who make them, the readers who love them and the world that shapes them.

HEIDI MacDONALD is an award-winning writer and editor and a veteran entertainment industry journalist. As an editor she has worked for Disney, Warner Bros., and Fox, among many others.

“I hope I look like God.” -Anthony Hopkins on playing Odin in the now-in-production Thor film directed by Kenneth Branagh. More at Sci-Fi Wire.

Ahmadinejad may be an evil prick, but his black, kinky sense of humour is undeniable. Obama just cut the nuts off NASA, and Iran (it claims) puts a capsule in orbit.

CIVIL WAR? Nothing. KICK-ASS? A warmup. What if the smartest, toughest costumed bad ass in the world was totally evil? Meet Nemesis. He’s systematically been destroying the lives of every police chief in Asia, and he’s now set his sights on Washington, DC. Between you and me, the police don’t have a chance. Do not miss the book that EVERYONE will be talking about by the creative team that made CIVIL WAR the biggest book of the decade.